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Disclaimer: This document is written in the hope that you can utilize for your own education to gain knowledge of PLC systems (should you decide to utilize this document). Although I believe the information in this document to be accurate, it is YOUR responsibility to verify this information before implementing it in any way, especially when damage to personnel or equipment could result. By continuing to read this document, you agree to hold no one who writes, modifies, or distributes this document liable in any way (even negligence). Due to the wide variety of plant applications, some of the examples in this document may be prohibited at your location, or could cause damage to equipment, or harm personnel.
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Setting up the Ethernet Driver in RSLinx


The ethernet driver is used to make a connection to Ethernet Devices, such as an Ethernet PLC-5, or a ControlLogix system. The following steps will walk you through a sample configuration of the Ethernet driver in RSLinx.


  1. Open RSLinx communication server





  1. Click 'Communication' on the menu bar, and then choose 'Configure Drivers'.





  1. From the Available driver types pull down menu, choose 'Ethernet Drives', then press the 'Add New' button.





  1. For this example, the name can be left at default. Press OK.




  1. Populate the list of hostnames. If you do not have a way to resolve hostnames, you can enter the IP address of the devices you wish to connect to (as shown below in the example). The IP address for each device can usually be obtained from the network administrator, drawings, the offline project, or in some cases, the IP address is displayed on the front of the module.






  1. Press Apply, then OK. You will see the driver is now running. Close the 'Configure Drivers' screen.







  1. To test your drivers, click the RSWho icon in the toolbar of RSLinx.\




  1. Click the Ethernet Driver (the one you just configured) on the left side of the screen. The devices you are communicating with will appear on the right. In this example, 192.168.0.95 is a ControlLogix module, and the other devices are not present, or not a recognized PLC module.




  1. To go online with a PLC, you must go to RSLogix at this point.